Ericksen surveyed the square suitcase with surprise. "Must ha' been!"
From his pocket Tom Dennis produced the two small keys which the assassin had carried. He fitted one of them to the lock of the square suitcase; it worked. Meantime, Ericksen was watching him with ill-concealed anxiety.
Throwing back the lid of the square suitcase Dennis saw that it contained nothing except a small phonograph and half a dozen very large records. The labels on the records proclaimed them to be grand-opera selections. Frowning thoughtfully, Dennis closed and locked the suitcase.
"I'll take this along. You might as well keep this compartment, Ericksen—I took that scoundrel's tickets; here they are. You'll find this place more comfortable than a berth. And you needn't mention to Mrs. Dennis what's happened. It might only worry her. I fancy we've given your friends the slip entirely, eh? Sorry I suspected you at first."
"Oh, don't mention it," said Ericksen, wriggling a little.
CHAPTER V
THE "PELICAN"
The brigantine-rigged Pelican was of but a hundred and fifty tons burden; yet her royal yard stood athwart the sky nearly ninety feet above the deck. She was not a pretty ship, despite her snowy cleanliness, but she was tall enough; in her 'midships stood the brick try-works, with two funnels, where blubber was rendered into oil; and she reeked of the whale-juice that had soaked her stout oaken timbers these forty years.
As she lay at anchor in Vancouver harbour, well up toward the second narrows, there were several peculiar features about her—peculiar, that is, to the trained seaman's eye.
She was bound for sea; yet she was altogether too late to get the spring catch off the Siberian coast; and if she went up into the Arctic to fill her hogsheads, she would certainly be ice-bound that winter, and few whalers were taking chances on being ice-bound those days! Then her crew had been all aboard for two days, and the majority of them were Kanakas—both facts being unusual. Why the Pelican was still hanging about the harbour no one could say.